Marisawright

I know of plenty of people on a WHV who have worked for more than 6 months with one employer - but never legally, I'm afraid!

@mwotherspoon - try reading the previous posts in this thread so you start to get an idea of what's involved. To get a straightforward (189) skilled visa, your occupation must be on the SOL (Skilled Occupation List) - which hairdressing isn't, so that is definitely not an option for you. It is on the CSOL, but only for the Northern Territory and Tasmania - and that means you have to be sponsored. Obviously you don't want to live in either of those states long-term, but if it's your only way of gaining the right to live in Australia permanently, it might be worth considering a year or two in another state, where at least you can fly home for regular holidays.

Surely you have realised by now, we do not have any members of this forum living in that area, so there is no one here who can tell you that. Bowral is almost a suburb of Sydney now. Wealthy Sydney people retire there, and some younger people commute to Sydney too, so it is very expensive (unlike most of the rest of the area you mention). Queanbeyan is also quite expensive because it is almost a suburb of Canberra. Elsewhere will be cheaper, but rentals in country areas are always expensive. Look on domain.com.au, realestate.com.au and allhomes.com.au to get an idea of rentals.

We are not experts! We are other people like you. Some of us have lived in Australia for a long time, but we are just ordinary people and we can only offer advice from our own experience. I don't think we have any members who actually live in that area. I don't know which country you are from, but if I asked you about job prospects in a rural area far from where you live, could you answer me accurately?

They are not suburbs, they are small cities and towns. You can find statistics for their population here: http://www.bobinoz.com/australias-states/new-south-wales/ You really need to learn how to use Google! As others have already told you - because that region is mainly farming country, job opportunities are not frequent. When a vacancy does arise, it is often difficult for them to find staff because most Australians do not wish to live in small country towns, so you would have a good chance of being hired - but you may have to arrive in the region, find work doing something else and then wait until something more suitable arises.

Centrelink will take your UK pension into account when working out how much Aussie pension to pay - so some people say it's not worth boosting the UK pension because all it will do is reduce your Aussie one! However, you also have to remember that the Aussie pension is means-tested, so it could still be worth boosting your UK pension. For me, it's definitely worth it because I won't get the full Aussie pension for several years after retirement due to my assets - whereas I will get my UK pension straight away. You can see how it would affect your Australian pension by using this calculator: http://yourpension.com.au/APCalc/index.html ...and do notice that your superannuation is also an asset, a lot of people assume it's not.

I thought you said you had a 489 visa. I have not heard of such a fund but I am not an expert.

Yes, I should've been more specific. The facility does exist, what I was trying to say is don't rely on it - employers don't use it much unless they are really stuck for candidates.

Manu, what people are trying to tell you is that employers will not contact you through Seek. You must find the jobs on the site and contact them. Jobs in the Southern Inland area are not plentiful, so it is not surprising if you cannot find any jobs right now, you just need to keep looking. You could also try ringing agencies who specialise in engineering vacancies. Google "engineering recruitment agencies Australia" to find suitable agencies. Most of the work in Australia is in the big cities or in the big mining centres. Southern Inland region has no big cities. There is mining but I can't help you with information on where.

It depends - what kind of work are you looking for? I don't know what you mean by "safe". Australia is generally a safe country. There was some bad publicity about Indians being robbed in Melbourne and Sydney, but they were not racist attacks, simply thieves mugging students for their tablets/phones/money, and that happens in any big city - I suspect it happens just as often in Indian cities.

My former MIL had gout and she swore by apple cider vinegar and honey, mixed with hot water. She drank it three times a day religiously! It's mentioned in this article, which also mentions baking soda - but note it says people with high blood pressure shouldn't take baking soda: http://www.top10homeremedies.com/home-remedies/home-remedies-for-gout.html This is an interesting article: http://www.webmd.boots.com/arthritis/news/20091021/fighting-gout-with-skimmed-milk-and-water

It's only a problem for big appliances. I'm not an electrician but it was explained to me that although the circuit is 13A like the UK, each individual plug socket is only 10A. In the UK, big appliances like a tumble dryer or dishwasher are rated at 13A so that's why they cause a meltdown.

If you're worried about that now, then I'd expect your feelings will only get worse once you've had a baby. Just browse around these forums and notice how many women are leaving - or are tempted to leave - their husbands to go back to the UK with their new baby. Not to say that would happen to you, but if you're thinking of starting a family, I think it would be best to delay emigration until after your first baby - you'll have a better idea of your feelings.

Bill, I think you may have sent your enquiry to the wrong place. The Residence Team won't talk to you until you are resident. For the Pension Department, which will talk to you, all I gave them was my maiden name and NI number.

It is so illuminating to read this thread. I think it should be required reading for everyone thinking of emigrating. Most children love their mother, but I suspect it's rare for them to love their mother with the kind of intense tiger love the mother feels. I didn't have kids myself and was absolutely amazed when I reached my fifties, to see my friends who were mums broken-hearted because their son or daughter left home. As far as I was concerned, I thought my Mum was glad to see the back of me when I left home. Of course I knew she loved me, but she was always making comments about birds leaving the nest and I always felt she was only half-joking. I thought she'd be delighted to have her freedom back. By the time I was confronted with my heartbroken friends, my mother had already passed away so I will never know whether she had the same feelings or not. I wish she'd been honest with me, so please do be honest with your son.

That post was written for people coming FROM the UK migrating TO Australia, so it's not useful or relevant to you.

The way they do that in Australia is as I described. They pre-approve couples (that process can take longer than a year), so that when a child comes up for adoption, they have a waiting list of couples ready and willing to take that child immediately.

In the olden days, the authorities were much less tolerant of problem parents -- if they had any doubt the parents could be trusted with the kids, they would remove them permanently and put them up for adoption. These days the attitude is that natural parents are always best, so social services prefer to put the child into foster care and try to rehabilitate the parent(s). Also - if you've seen Love Child! - single mothers used to be pressured to give up their babies, whereas now they're pressured to keep them.

It's the way it works in Australia and it is very well planned! The process of being approved for adoption was very painstaking and took over a year. Once the whole approval process was completed, they were put on the waiting list. They attended a course and were given a manual, so they would be prepared to act fast once they got the call. I think the logic is that if a mother gives up a baby for adoption, they don't want the baby to be without a mother a moment longer than necessary, so the baby isn't put into institutional care -- it goes straight from the hospital to a couple on the waiting list.

Yes it's hard these days. It's not just the tighter controls, it's that their are fewer children around to adopt. It's not an easy thing to do, anyway. One of my friends got approved for adoption and she was SO excited, it had been her dream for years. But she wasn't prepared for the actual process. They got approved and then got told to wait for the call. You're told that the call may come tomorrow, or you may be waiting a year or more, so you can't make any plans. When you get the call, one partner has to give up work on the spot (there must be one stay-at-home parent). Then you visit to see the baby and you have to take a piece of clothing you've worn, which you leave with the baby so he/she gets used to your scent. Then you have just a few days to equip the nursery and get your home ready, then you go and pick up the baby and go home! You can just imagine how overwhelming it is to have no baby one day, and a week later you're a mother. No nine months to get ready for it! She really struggled at first to bond with the baby. I think she was lucky that it was a small baby - some people adopt at older ages and I'd think it must be much harder to think of it as your own.

What do you mean by withdrawals? If you take your lump sum before you leave Australia and put it in your bank account, it is simply savings in your bank and the UK government won't care where it came from. Once you are resident in the UK, you will simply declare any interest you earn on those savings, and also declare the 10% tax which your Australian bank will withhold from your interest (so you're not taxed twice). If you convert your super to a pension and then receive pension payments, you will declare those payments as ordinary income on your UK tax return. If you leave your super in Australia and withdraw lump sums from it in the UK, then the UK government may tax you on foreign currency gains you've made by holding investments in Australia. They are not interested in historical tax paid or not paid, so whether the original payments were deducted/undeducted is irrelevant.

Yes, I had the same pressure - when I got married (at 20!), my mother-in-law showed me two teddy bears, sitting in her airing cupboard, and said, "they're ready when you are"!! Thankfully my Mum said, "don't have kids unless you want to". In the end I never did have children and I have to say, at 60 I'm still waiting for the regrets to kick in. Who knows what my life would've been like with kids, but it's been a wonderful life without them.

Again, I don't think nature bears that out. In nature, many animals never get to mate let alone have offspring. That can be due to opportunity, or it could be the pecking order in a herd or pack (only the dominant animals are allowed to reproduce). Humans are unique in being able (sometimes) to make a choice about it, rather than being dictated by circumstances. In fact if every single animal (or every single human) in the world did reproduce, we'd be in even more trouble than we are now!

I don't disagree. No one should be having kids because they "should" (which was the attitude often pushed on to my generation) - it's up to each individual. But what I see now is the opposite: young women who really want a baby, being pressured into not fulfilling that desire because today's society demands you have to 'achieve' first. That would be fine if getting pregnant in her thirties was guaranteed, but it isn't -- these days most of us have trouble predicting what we'll be doing in 5 years let alone 10 or 15.

Your time will come. Maybe you're just being more sensible, and bypassing the mistakes and failed relationships/marriages some of us have along the way! I was in two long relationships (one a marriage) before I finally found my current oh, and by that time I was fifty. So you've got a long way to go yet before you have to worry!